PRAGMATICS 3 CH 7 POLITENESS AND INTERACTION Linguistic

PRAGMATICS 3

CH 7: POLITENESS AND INTERACTION Linguistic interaction is also social interaction. External factors (prior to interaction) influence our behaviour. and so do Internal factors (may change during interaction).

Arrange these in order of politeness: (least polite first) Set the table! Could you please set the table? Set the table, will you? Would you mind if i asked you to set the table? Can you set the table?

POLITENESS A term often used when we talk about politeness is face. Face is awareness of other person’s self image. We show either distance/respect or friendliness/solidarity. FACE WANTS = A person’s expectations that their public self image will be respected. Face threatening act = something that represents a threat to another individual’s public self image. (Avoid orders). Face saving act = avoidance of a potential threat to a person’s self image. (Use questions).

NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE FACE Negative face = our right to independence of action and our need not to be imposed upon by others. Positive face = our need to be accepted and liked by others and our need to feel that our social group shares common goals; our need to be connected.

Negative politeness = geared towards preserving the negative face of other people; shows awareness of other’s need for independence. Positive politeness = preserving the positive face; emphasizing that both speaker and hearer want the same thing.

How to make people see your needs: Say nothing but let action speak. Talk to yourself. Ask someone, bald on record or use mitigating devices (please). Let’s look at an example:

You want to borrow someone’s stapler. How do you go about it? Say nothing but act. Look around for one, handle your papers. Say something, either off record (ie. talking to something yourself) or on record (ie. addressing someone) Lend me your stapler. =Bald on record Lend me your stapler, please.

Words that soften demands like please are called mitigating devices. If these are not present , we talk of bald on record. See Yule p. 66, How to borrow something from someone.

Positive politeness strategies; appeal to solidarity: It would be really nice of you if I could borrow your… Negative politeness strategies; awareness of other’s right not to be imposed upon: I know you probably need it yourself, but could I possibly use…

Strategies: Solidarity strategy: emphasizes closeness to strategy addressee. Involves personal information, first names, nicknames etc. We, let’s, dialect, nicknames. Deference strategy: emphasizes the nonstrategy personal. Formal politeness.

ACTS AND PRE-ACTS Sometimes we need to prepare the addressee for what is to come, so we have pre-requests, pre-invitations, pre-announcements. - Are you busy? - Are you doing anything on Saturday? - Want to hear something interesting?

CHAPTER 8: CONVERSATION AND PREFERENCE STRUCTURE Conversational analysis (CA) How do we manage to conduct a conversation? Floor: the current right to speak in a conversation. Floor Turn: the person who is speaking has the turn. Turn-taking : the shift between speakers. Turn-taking Transition Relevance Place (TRP): a possible point (TRP) where a change of speakers occur.

Overlap should be avoided, but also too long pauses (= attributable silence). silence TRPs occur at the end of a unit. You can avoid letting other speakers in by having no open pauses at the end of a syntactic unit, or indicate a longer structure: - There are several comments I’d like to make on this…

Turn-yielding signals prosody syntax semantics 8/10 turn-takings take place without simultaneous talking.

Back-channels m, m-hm, yeah, yes, that’s right sentence completion brief restatements (request for clarification)

Back-channels - are not turn-claiming - encourage the current speaker to go on - signal the listener’s active participation - express agreement, acceptance, under-standing - can occur almost anywhere in the current speaker’s turn - are both speaker and situation specific

Listeners are rarely silent for more than 15 seconds. Therefore the absence of back channels is significant.

CONVERSATIONAL STYLE High involvement style vs High considerateness style. These may not be identified as different conversational styles but as different personal traits. In conversations we find adjacency pairs, such as greetings: Hi!

Questions and answers: When did Wendy leave ? Yesterday Invitation and acceptance: Would you like to come for a coffee? Sure! Love to! Apology and acceptance: I’m so sorry! That’s OK.

Request for favour and granting: - Could I please borrow your pen? - Yes, of course.

PREFERENCE STRUCTURES In adjacency pairs there is one preferred answer, the preference structure. This is the most frequent response. Agree and accept are preferred to disagree, refuse and decline. This is one reason why pre-sequences are so pre-sequences common.

CH. 9 DISCOURSE AND CULTURE In discourse analysis you talk about three different functions; Interpersonal function: deals with personal interaction. Textual function: deals with what makes a text wellformed. Ideational function: deals with thought and experience.

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS The study of language with reference to the social and psychological factors that influence communication. What makes a text well-formed? The links that create cohesion. Discourse analysis deals a lot with text-specific features – story telling, debate, news reporting.

The pragmatic element focuses on what is unsaid or unwritten, but communicated. It is interested in background knowledge, beliefs and expectations. What did the speaker/writer have in mind?

COHERENCE Coherent language (whether written or spoken) makes sense to the listener and provides the clues as to how the text is to interpreted. Background knowledge includes: SCHEMATA: knowledge patterns of situations, SCHEMATA also contains FRAMES (=fixed patterns of how FRAMES we assume things to be). Eg. What do we expect to find in a library, in a supermarket.

SCRIPT – knowledge pattern of sequences of SCRIPT events, eg. what happens when we go to the movies, when we get on a bus, when we go to the public baths.

CULTURAL SCHEMATA = schemata based on knowledge of a particular culture. CROSS-CULTURAL PRAGMATICS; differences in expectations based on cultural schemata. CONTRASTIVE PRAGMATICS; the study of different cultural ways of talking. INTERLANGUAGE PRAGMATICS; learner pragmatics Pragmatic accent.